This video features a really great conversation with the Packet Pushers’ Greg Ferro and Keith Townsend about how life under lockdown is impacting the event ecosystem. Even before COVID-19 reshaped lives, Keith was organizing the CTO Advisor Virtual Conference. Greg has long advocated that the physical attendance of a conference is often unnecessary, and they discussed Keith’s experience in organizing these virtual events.
While people may think that virtual events lack compared to physical ones, Keith saw a number of advantages. For one, he was able to move with the event extremely quickly, going from thinking of the event to holding it in under 6 weeks. One of the other advantages was being able to create a truly inclusive event and provide equal opportunity for people to participate and attend the event.
It doesn’t look like any events will be on the calendar for 2020, so this conversation shows that virtual events aren’t just a good alternative. Instead, these have unique benefits impossible to their physical counterparts.
